Wilfrid Cumbermede by George MacDonald

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As we approached the house, Charley crept up the other side of Clara's
horse, and laid his hand on his mane. When he spoke Clara started, for
she was looking the other way and had not observed his approach.

'Miss Clara,' he said, 'I am very sorry I was so rude. Will you forgive
me?'

Instead of being hard to reconcile, as I had feared from her outburst
of indignation, she leaned forward and laid her hand on his. He looked
up in her face, his own suffused with a colour I had never seen in it
before. His great blue eyes lightened with thankfulness, and began to
fill with tears. How she looked, I could not see. She withdrew her
hand, and Charley dropped behind again. In a little while he came up to
my side, and began talking. He soon got quite merry, but Clara in her
turn was silent.

I doubt if anything would be worth telling but for what comes after.
History itself would be worthless but for what it cannot tell, namely,
its own future. Upon this ground my reader must excuse the apparent
triviality of the things I am now relating.

When we were alone in our room that night--for ever since Charley's
illness we two had had a room to ourselves--Charley said,

'I behaved like a brute this morning, Wilfrid.'

'No, Charley; you were only a little rude from being over-eager. If she
had been seriously advocating dishonesty, you would have been quite
right to take it up so; and you thought she was.'

'Yes; but it was very silly of me. I dare say it was because I had been
so dishonest myself just before. How dreadful it is that I am always
taking my own side, even when I do what I am ashamed of in another! I
suppose I think I have got my horse by the head, and the other has
not.'

'I don't know. That may be it,' I answered. 'I'm afraid I can't think
about it to-night, for I don't feel well. What if it should be your
turn to nurse me now, Charley?'

He turned quite pale, his eyes opened wide, and he looked at me
anxiously.

Before morning I was aching all over: I had rheumatic fever.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHARLEY NURSES ME.

I saw no more of Clara. Mr Coningham came to bid me good-bye, and spoke
very kindly. Mr Forest would have got a nurse for me, but Charley
begged so earnestly to be allowed to return the service I had done for
him that he yielded.

I was in great pain for more than a week. Charley's attentions were
unremitting. In fact he nursed me more like a woman than a boy; and
made me think with some contrition how poor my ministrations had been.
Even after the worst was over, if I but moved, he was at my bedside in
a moment. Certainly no nurse could have surpassed him. I could bear no
one to touch me but him: from any one else I dreaded torture; and my
medicine was administered to the very moment by my own old watch, which
had been brought to do its duty at least respectably.

One afternoon, finding me tolerably comfortable, he said, 'Shall I read
something to you, Wilfrid?'

He never called me Willie, as most of my friends did.

'I should like it,' I answered.

'What shall I read?' he asked.

'Hadn't you something in your head,' I rejoined, 'when you proposed
it?'

'Well, I had; but I don't know if you would like it.'

'What did you think of, then?'

'I thought of a chapter in the New Testament.'

'How could you think I should not like that?'

'Because I never saw you say your prayers.'

'That is quite true. But you don't think I never say my prayers,
although you never see me do it?'

The fact was, my uncle, amongst his other peculiarities, did not
approve of teaching children to say their prayers. But he did not
therefore leave me without instruction in the matter of praying--either
the idlest or the most availing of human actions. He would say, 'When
you want anything, ask for it, Willie; and if it is worth your having,
you will have it. But don't fancy you are doing God any service by
praying to him. He likes you to pray to him because he loves you, and
wants you to love him. And whatever you do, don't go saying a lot of
words you don't mean. If you think you ought to pray, say your Lord's
Prayer, and have done with it.' I had no theory myself on the matter;
but when I was in misery on the wild mountains, I had indeed prayed to
God; and had even gone so far as to hope, when I got what I prayed for,
that he had heard my prayer.

Charley made no reply.

'It seems to me better that sort of thing shouldn't be seen, Charley,'
I persisted.

'Perhaps, Wilfrid; but I was taught to say my prayers regularly.' 'I
don't think much of that either,' I answered. 'But I've said a good
many prayers since I've been here, Charley. I can't say I'm sure it's
of any use, but I can't help trying after something--I don't know
what--something I want, and don't know how to get.'

'But it's only the prayer of faith that's heard--do you believe,
Wilfrid?'

'I don't know. I daren't say I don't. I wish I could say I do. But I
dare say things will be considered.'

'Wouldn't it be grand if it was true, Wilfrid?'

'What, Charley?'

'That God actually let his creatures see him--and--all that came of it,
you know?'

'It would be grand indeed! But supposing it true, how could we be
expected to believe it like them that saw him with their own eyes? _I_
couldn't be required to believe just as if I could have no doubt about
it. It wouldn't be fair. Only--perhaps we haven't got the clew by the
right end.'

'Perhaps not. But sometimes I hate the whole thing. And then again I
feel as if I _must_ read all about it; not that I care for it exactly,
but because a body must do something--because--I don't know how to say
it--because of the misery, you know.'

'I don't know that I do know--quite. But now you have started the
subject, I thought that was great nonsense Mr Forest was talking about
the authority of the Church the other day.'

'Well, _I_ thought so, too. I don't see what right they have to say so
and so, if they didn't hear him speak. As to what he meant, they may be
right or they may be wrong. If they _have_ the gift of the Spirit, as
they say--how am I to tell they have? All impostors claim it as well as
the true men. If I had ever so little of the same gift myself, I
suppose I could tell; but they say no one has till he believes--so they
may be all humbugs for anything I can possibly tell; or they may be all
true men, and yet I may fancy them all humbugs, and can't help it.'

I was quite as much astonished to hear Charley talk in this style as
some readers will be doubtful whether a boy could have talked such good
sense. I said nothing, and a silence followed.

'Would you like me to read to you, then?' he asked.

'Yes, I should; for, do you know, after all, I don't think there's
anything like the New Testament.'

'Anything like it!' he repeated. 'I should think not! Only I wish I did
know what it all meant. I wish I could talk to my father as I would to
Jesus Christ if I saw _him_. But if I could talk to my father, he
wouldn't understand me. He would speak to me as if I were the very scum
of the universe for daring to have a doubt of what _he_ told me.'

'But he doesn't mean _himself_,' I said.

'Well, who told him?'

'The Bible.'

'And who told the Bible?'

'God, of course.'

'But how am I to know that? I only know that they say so. Do you know,
Wilfrid--I _don't_ believe my father is quite sure himself, and that is
what makes him in such a rage with anybody who doesn't think as he
does. He's afraid it mayn't be true after all.'

I had never had a father to talk to, but I thought something must be
wrong when a boy _couldn't_ talk to his father. My uncle was a better
father than that came to.

Another pause followed, during which Charley searched for a chapter to
fit the mood. I will not say what chapter he found, for, after all, I
doubt if we had any real notion of what it meant. I know, however, that
there were words in it which found their way to my conscience; and, let
men of science or philosophy say what they will, the rousing of a man's
conscience is the greatest event in his existence. In such a matter,
the consciousness of the man himself is the sole witness. A Chinese can
expose many of the absurdities and inconsistencies of the English: it
is their own Shakspere who must bear witness to their sins and faults,
as well as their truths and characteristics.

After this we had many conversations about such things, one of which I
shall attempt to report by-and-by. Of course, in any such attempt all
that can be done is to put the effect into fresh conversational form.
What I have just written must at least be more orderly than what passed
between us; but the spirit is much the same, and mere fact is of
consequence only as it affects truth.

CHAPTER XX.

A DREAM.

The best immediate result of my illness was that I learned to love
Charley Osborne dearly. We renewed an affection resembling from afar
that of Shakspere for his nameless friend; we anticipated that
informing _In Memoriam_. Lest I be accused of infinite arrogance, let
me remind my reader that the sun is reflected in a dewdrop as in the
ocean.

One night I had a strange dream, which is perhaps worth telling for the
involution of its consciousness.

I thought I was awake in my bed, and Charley asleep in his. I lay
looking into the room. It began to waver and change. The night-light
enlarged and receded; and the walls trembled and waved. The light had
got behind them, and shone through them.

'Charley! Charley!' I cried; for I was frightened.

'I heard him move: but before he reached me, I was lying on a lawn,
surrounded by trees, with the moon shining through them from behind.
The next moment Charley was by my side.

'Isn't it prime?' he said. 'It's all over.'

'What do you mean, Charley?' I asked.

'I mean that we're both dead now. It's not so very bad--is it?'

'Nonsense, Charley!' I returned; '_I_'m not dead. I'm as wide alive as
ever I was. Look here.'

So saying, I sprung to my feet, and drew myself up before him.

'Where's your worst pain?' said Charley, with a curious expression in
his tone.

'Here,' I answered. 'No; it's not; it's in my back. No, it isn't. It's
nowhere. I haven't got any pain.'

Charley laughed a low laugh, which sounded as sweet as strange. It was
to the laughter of the world 'as moonlight is to sunlight,' but not 'as
water is to wine,' for what it had lost in sound it had gained in
smile.

'Tell me now you're not dead!' he exclaimed triumphantly.

'But,' I insisted, 'don't you see I'm alive? _You_ may be dead for
anything I know--but I _am not_--I know that.'

'You're just as dead as I am,' he said. 'Look here.'

A little way off, in an open plot by itself, stood a little white rose
tree, half mingled with the moonlight. Charley went up to it, stepped
on the topmost twig, and stood: the bush did not even bend under him.

'Very well,' I answered. 'You are dead, I confess. But now, look you
here.'

I went to a red rose-bush which stood at some distance, blanched in the
moon, set my foot on the top of it, and made as if I would ascend,
expecting to crush it, roses and all, to the ground. But behold! I was
standing on my red rose opposite Charley on his white.

'I told you so,' he cried, across the moonlight, and his voice sounded
as if it came from the moon far away.

'Oh Charley!' I cried, 'I'm so frightened!'

'What are you frightened at?'

'At you. You're dead, you know.'

'It is a good thing, Wilfrid,' he rejoined, in a tone of some reproach,
'that I am not frightened at you for the same reason; for what would
happen then?'

'I don't know. I suppose you would go away and leave me alone in this
ghostly light.'

'If I were frightened at you as you are at me, we should not be able to
see each other at all. If you take courage the light will grow.'

'Don't leave me, Charley,' I cried, and flung myself from my tree
towards his. I found myself floating, half reclined on the air. We met
midway each in the other's arms.

'I don't know where I am, Charley.'

'That is my father's rectory.'

He pointed to the house, which I had not yet observed. It lay quite
dark in the moonlight, for not a window shone from within.

'Don't leave me, Charley.'

'Leave you! I should think not, Wilfrid. I have been long enough
without you already.'

'Have you been long dead, then, Charley?'

'Not very long. Yes, a long time. But, indeed, I don't know. We don't
count time as we used to count it.--I want to go and see my father. It
is long since I saw _him_, anyhow. Will you come?'

'If you think I might--if you wish it,' I said, for I had no great
desire to see Mr Osborne. 'Perhaps he won't care to see me.'

'Perhaps not,' said Charley, with another low silvery laugh. 'Come
along.'

We glided over the grass. A window stood a little open on the second
floor. We floated up, entered, and stood by the bedside of Charley's
father. He lay in a sound sleep.

'Father! father!' said Charley, whispering in his ear as he lay--'it's
all right. You need not be troubled about me any more.'

Mr Osborne turned on his pillow.

'He's dreaming about us now,' said Charley. 'He sees us both standing
by his bed.'

But the next moment Mr Osborne sat up, stretched out his arms towards
us with the open palms outwards, as if pushing us away from him, and
cried,

'Depart from me, all evil-doers. O Lord! do I not hate them that hate
thee?'

He followed with other yet more awful words which I never could recall.
I only remember the feeling of horror and amazement they left behind. I
turned to Charley. He had disappeared, and I found myself lying in the
bed beside Mr Osborne. I gave a great cry of dismay--when there was
Charley again beside me, saying,

'What's the matter, Wilfrid? Wake up. My father's not here.'

I did wake, but until I had felt in the bed I could not satisfy myself
that Mr Osborne was indeed not there.

'You've been talking in your sleep. I could hardly get you waked,' said
Charley, who stood there in his shirt.

'Oh Charley!' I cried, 'I've had such a dream!'

'What was it, Wilfrid?'

'Oh! I can't talk about it yet,' I answered.

I never did tell him that dream; for even then I was often uneasy about
him--he was so sensitive. The affections of my friend were as hoops of
steel; his feelings a breath would ripple. Oh, my Charley! if ever we
meet in that land so vaguely shadowed in my dream, will you not know
that I loved you heartily well? Shall I not hasten' to lay bare my
heart before you--the priest of its confessional? Oh, Charley! when the
truth is known, the false will fly asunder as the Autumn leaves in the
wind; but the true, whatever their faults, will only draw together the
more tenderly that they have sinned against each other.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE FROZEN STREAM.

Before the Winter arrived, I was well, and Charley had recovered from
the fatigue of watching me. One holiday, he and I set out alone to
accomplish a scheme we had cherished from the first appearance of the
frost. How it arose I hardly remember; I think it came of some remark
Mr Forest had made concerning the difference between the streams of
Switzerland and England--those in the former country being emptiest,
those in the latter fullest in the Winter. It was--when the frost
should have bound up the sources of the beck which ran almost by our
door, and it was no longer a stream, but a rope of ice--to take that
rope for our guide, and follow it as far as we could towards the secret
recesses of its Summer birth.

Along the banks of the stream, we followed it up and up, meeting a
varied loveliness which it would take the soul of a Wordsworth or a
Ruskin to comprehend or express. To my poor faculty the splendour of
the ice-crystals remains the one memorial thing. In those lonely
water-courses the sun was gloriously busy, with none to praise him
except Charley and me.

Where the banks were difficult we went down into the frozen bed, and
there had story above story of piled-up loveliness, with opal and
diamond cellars below. Spikes and stars crystalline radiated and
refracted and reflected marvellously. But we did not reach the primary
source of the stream by miles; we were stopped by a precipitous rock,
down the face of which one half of the stream fell, while the other
crept out of its foot, from a little cavernous opening about four feet
high. Charley was a few yards ahead of me, and ran stooping into the
cavern. I followed. But when I had gone as far as I dared for the
darkness and the down-sloping roof, and saw nothing of him, I grew
dismayed, and called him. There was no answer. With a thrill of horror
my dream returned upon me. I got on my hands and knees and crept
forward. A short way further the floor sank--only a little, I believe,
but from the darkness I took the descent for an abyss into which
Charley had fallen. I gave a shriek of despair, and scrambled out of
the cave howling. In a moment he was by my side. He had only crept
behind a projection for a trick. His remorse was extreme. He begged my
pardon in the most agonized manner.

'Never mind, Charley,' I said; 'you didn't mean it.'

'Yes, I did mean it,' he returned. 'The temptation came, and I yielded;
only I did not know how dreadful it would be to you.'

'Of course not. You wouldn't have done it if you had.'

'How am I to know that, Wilfrid? I might have done it. Isn't it
frightful that a body may go on and on till a thing is done, and then
wish he hadn't done it? I am a despicable creature. Do you know,
Wilfrid, I once shot a little bird--for no good, but just to shoot at
something. It wasn't that I didn't think of it--don't say that. I did
think of it. I knew it was wrong. When I had levelled my gun, I thought
of it quite plainly, and yet drew the trigger. It dropped, a heap of
ruffled feathers. I shall never get that little bird out of my head.
And the worst of it is that to all eternity I can never make any
atonement'

'But God will forgive you, Charley.'

'What do I care for that,' he rejoined, almost fiercely, 'when the
little bird cannot forgive me?--I would go on my knees to the little
bird, if I could, to beg its pardon and tell it-what a brute I was, and
it might shoot me if it would, and I should say "Thank you."'

He laughed almost hysterically, and the tears ran down his face.

I have said little about my uncle's teaching, lest I should bore my
readers. But there it came in, and therefore here it must come in. My
uncle had, by no positive instruction, but by occasional observations,
not one of which I can recall, generated in me a strong hope that the
life of the lower animals was terminated at their death no more than
our own. The man who believes that thought is the result of brain, and
not the growth of an unknown seed whose soil is the brain, may well
sneer at this, for he is to himself but a peck of dust that has to be
eaten by the devouring jaws of Time; but I cannot see how the man who
believes in soul at all, can say that the spirit of a man lives, and
that the spirit of his horse dies. I do not profess to believe anything
for _certain sure_ myself, but I do think that he who, if from merely
philosophical considerations, believes the one, ought to believe the
other as well. Much more must the theosophist believe it. But I had
never felt the need of the doctrine until I beheld the misery of
Charley over the memory of the dead sparrow. Surely that sparrow fell
not to the ground without the Father's knowledge.

'Charley! how do you know,' I said, 'that you can never beg the bird's
pardon? If God made the bird, do you fancy with your gun you could
destroy the making of his hand? If he said, "Let there be," do you
suppose you could say, "There shall not be"?' (Mr Forest had read that
chapter of first things at morning prayers.) 'I fancy myself that for
God to put a bird all in the power of a silly thoughtless boy--'

'Not thoughtless! not thoughtless! There is the misery!' said Charley.

But I went on--

'--would be worse than for you to shoot it.'

A great glow of something I dare not attempt to define grew upon
Charley's face. It was like what I saw on it when Clara laid her hand
on his. But presently it died out again, and he sighed--

'If there _were_ a God--that is, if I were sure there was a God,
Wilfrid!'

I could not answer. How could I? _I_ had never seen God, as the old
story says Moses did on the clouded mountain. All I could return was,

'Suppose there should be a God, Charley!--Mightn't there be a God!'

'I don't know,' he returned. 'How should _I_ know whether there _might_
be a God?'

'But _may_ there not be a _might be?_' I rejoined.

'There may be. How should I say the other thing?' said Charley.

I do not mean this was exactly what he or I said. Unable to recall the
words themselves, I put the sense of the thing in as clear a shape as I
can.

We were seated upon a stone in the bed of the stream, off which the sun
had melted the ice. The bank rose above us, but not far. I thought I
heard a footstep. I jumped up, but saw no one. I ran a good way up the
stream to a place where I could climb the bank; but then saw no one.
The footstep, real or imagined, broke our conversation at that point,
and we did not resume it. All that followed was--

'If I were the sparrow, Charley, I would not only forgive you, but
haunt you for ever out of gratitude that you were sorry you had killed
me.'

'Then you _do_ forgive me for frightening you?' he said eagerly.

Very likely Charley and I resembled each other too much to be the best
possible companions for each other. There was, however, this difference
between us--that he had been bored with religion and I had not. In
other words, food had been forced upon him, which had only been laid
before me.

We rose and went home. A few minutes after our entrance, Mr Forest came
in--looking strange, I thought. The conviction crossed my mind that it
was his footstep we had heard over our heads as we sat in the channel
of the frozen stream. I have reason to think that he followed us for a
chance of listening. Something had set him on the watch--most likely
the fact that we were so much together, and did not care for the
society of the rest of our schoolfellows. From that time, certainly, he
regarded Charley and myself with a suspicious gloom. We felt it, but
beyond talking to each other about it, and conjecturing its cause, we
could do nothing. It made Charley very unhappy at times, deepening the
shadow which brooded over his mind; for his moral skin was as sensitive
to changes in the moral atmosphere as the most sensitive of plants to
those in the physical. But unhealthy conditions in the smallest
communities cannot last long without generating vapours which result in
some kind of outburst.

The other boys, naturally enough, were displeased with us for holding
so much together. They attributed it to some fancy of superiority,
whereas there was nothing in it beyond the simplest preference for each
other's society. We were alike enough to understand each other, and
unlike enough to interest and aid each other. Besides, we did not care
much for the sports in which boys usually explode their superfluous
energy. I preferred a walk and a talk with Charley to anything else.

I may here mention that these talks had nearly cured me of
castle-building. To spin yarns for Charley's delectation would have
been absurd. He cared for nothing but the truth. And yet he could never
assure himself that anything was true. The more likely a thing looked
to be true, the more anxious was he that it should be unassailable; and
his fertile mind would in as many moments throw a score of objections
at it, looking after each with eager eyes as if pleading for a
refutation. It was the very love of what was good that generated in him
doubt and anxiety.

When our schoolfellows perceived that Mr Forest also was dissatisfied
with us, their displeasure grew to indignation; and we did not endure
its manifestations without a feeling of reflex defiance.

CHAPTER XXII.

AN EXPLOSION.

One Spring morning we had got up early and sauntered out together. I
remember perfectly what our talk was about. Charley had started the
question: 'How could it be just to harden Pharaoh's heart and then
punish him for what came of it?' I who had been brought up without any
superstitious reverence for the Bible, suggested that the narrator of
the story might be accountable for the contradiction, and simply that
it was not true that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Strange to say,
Charley was rather shocked at this. He had as yet received the dogma of
the infallibility of the Bible without thinking enough about it to
question it. Nor did it now occur to him what a small affair it was to
find a book fallible, compared with finding the God of whom the book
spoke fallible upon its testimony--for such was surely the dilemma. Men
have been able to exist without a Bible: if there be a God it must be
in and through Him that all men live; only if he be not true, then in
Him, and not in the first Adam, all men die.

We were talking away about this, no doubt after a sufficiently crude
manner, as we approached the house, unaware that we had lingered too
long. The boys were coming out from breakfast for a game before school.

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